Posts categorized "Social Media"

January 13, 2015

Think of it as the morning after. Actually, it was the Monday following the week when 2015 International CES ended, on a Friday. I was scrolling through my email, trying to decompress — feeling some pride in surviving multiple weeks of being blasted with hundreds (thousands?) of PR pitches from an absolutely cuh-razy variety of exhibiting companies, from all over the globe. The blisters on my feet weren’t hurting so bad anymore. Whew! Things were finally starting to… slow… down.

Part of this decompression process is always trying to form in my head my overall opinion of the show — this after writing a couple of posts (and shooting a ton of photos), but no one person can ever really write enough posts to describe their entire experience at this thing. Which begs the question, how the hell do I summarize yet another year of this massive tech-product sensory overload? It is not easy netting it out!

As luck would have it, however, along comes one last, lonely email pitch, from a smart PR guy in New York (Jay Kolbe, Managing Director of SparkPR). I’ve never met him, but I’m liking what I’m reading. He’s telling me what he has today is “the most comprehensive data set you're going to find about CES, with regards to what was actually ‘talked about’ and ‘seen’ in the last week online, via mobile and across Twitter.” Music to my ears! He’s summarized it for me… with real data!

So, what follows — pretty much word-for-word — is what he proceeded to tell me in that email pitch. I asked him if he had any charts to support his summary, and he quickly complied. The data, and the charts, are from Amobee Intelligence, a digital marketing company that developed an intelligence technology platform, which is described at the end of this post. (Amobee is, you guessed it, a SparkPR client.) Herewith, that data summary, which supports a lot of what I had observed with my own eyes (and heard and read) at the show. But it gave me more insight than I could possibly have gathered on my own... and nothing beats real data, ya know?

Samsung, Sony, and LG made the biggest impact at CES, but not necessarily for what they actually showed during the event. In several instances, awareness for these brands was driven as much by what they didn't bring to the event as to what they actually displayed. TVs and computers were strong, as always, but washing machines (yes WASHING MACHINES! as in the "Internet of Things”) and Wearables were as prominent as ever. And the auto industry continued its growing involvement with the event, mostly on the strength of talk about self-driving cars.

Samsung indexed as the most "seen" brand online, via mobile and across social, during the week of CES. From curved computer screens, to SUHD TVs with enhanced LCD backlights, to washing machines with built-in sinks for washing delicates, what made Samsung stand out was the sheer volume of products that they brought to the event in Las Vegas. Also gaining them notice was their renewed focus on the "Internet of Things.” By 2017, Samsung is projecting that 90% of their products will be connected to the Internet.

Mobile Products and Washing Machines: Top of the Class at CES

While rumors that Samsung would debut the Galaxy S6 at CES proved untrue, that phone still caused a sizable amount of online chatter, driving speculation that they were showing the smartphone privately to carriers at the event. Galaxy S6-related interest represented 11% of all the Samsung awareness around CES.

Nearly as ubiquitous, Sony had 71% as much CES-related consumption as Samsung between January 6-9. Among the Sony products generating interest were what they claimed was the world¹s thinnest 4K TV, Playstation Now (an app that lets you play popular video games from the cloud without needing to buy a console), an HD action camera with 4K video, and the relaunch of the iconic Walkman — now reimagined as a high-end HD music player with Bluetooth headphones for serious audiophiles.

As with Samsung, much of the discussion around Sony was for the highly anticipated Xperia Z4, which wasn’t publicly shown at CES, as many hoped, driving discussions online that accounted for 24% of all Sony-related awareness at CES.

Another brand making waves was LG, which had 61% as much CES awareness asSamsung during the event. LG was a brand that did unveil its big smartphones at CES, with the bendable LG G Flex 2 accounting for 22% of all LG-related consumption at CES. Other hits included seven 4K OLED TVs with Quantum Dot Displays and an extremely popular Twin Wash washing machine, which pragmatically allows you to get two loads done at once. There was also a semi-mysterious smart watch built for Audi that allows you to unlock your car, among other functions.

Computing Always Strong at CES

Meanwhile Intel had 37% as much related awareness as Samsung over the course of CES. 12% of Intel CES related consumption was around Curie, the button sized platform meant to power the next generation of wearable devices, with another 6% of Intel¹s awareness at the convention related to RealSense. While RealSense is already in the market, much of the focus in the Intel keynote was around both practical and imaginative applications for the camera recognition system. Intel also made a big splash with their announcement that they¹d be devoting $300 million to improving workplace diversity in their workforce.

Lenovo managed to draw 16% awareness as Samsung, driven by their lineup of Tab 2 A7 tablets, Flex 3 laptops, and the S41 Notebook - all budget devices. Blackberry had 13% as much awareness as Samsung, largely around the announcement of QNX becoming an "Internet of Things" platform and around BBM messaging coming to Android Wear. It appears that their embracing of IoT is helping return Blackberry to prominence.

There was 12% as much consumption around Asus as Samsung, almost exclusively around the Zenfone 2 phablet.

Autos Show Well at CES

For the second year in a row, self-driving cars made the biggest impression at the event. With 11% as much awareness as Samsung, Mercedes-Benz made a splash with their self-driving car prototype, the F 015 Luxury in Motion. Meanwhile, Audi had 10% as much awareness as Samsung, around their own autonomous car and the previously mentioned LG watch prototype.

There was 46% as much CES-related awareness around BMW as around Mercedes-Benz, primarily for the BMW iHome Charging Service for electric cars and their experimental ActiveAssist technology, which literally makes it impossible to crash your car when you¹re parking it. NVIDIA had 31% as much CES awareness as Mercedes, mostly around Drive PX platform that identifies objects from up to 12 cameras at once, and will be used to power self-driving cars. Volkswagen had 30% as much CES awareness as Mercedes, around their Golf R Touch touch-less gesture-controlled interface concept and semi-automatic Park Assist feature.

At slightly lower of a profile, Ford had 19% as much CES awareness as Mercedes-Benz, mostly around their SYNC 3 communications and entertainment system, with such features as improved voice recognition. Similarly themed, Parrot had 13% as much CES related awareness as Mercedes-Benz — around The Simple Box, their connected automotive infotainment solution. Android Auto also had 13% as much CES awareness, as brands like Volkswagen, Kenwood, Parrot, and Pioneer integrated Android Auto into their products.

Making less consumer focused news, Toyota had 8% as much awareness as Mercedes, on the heels of releasing 5,680 patents around their fuel cell technology, in an effort to promote "unconventional collaboration.” Finally, Chevy had 4% as much awareness around their last-minute decision to unveil the 2016 Chevrolet Volt at CES, instead of the Detroit Auto Show a week later.

Like Dark Matter, Apple Was Part of the CES Conversation Even When It Was Unseen

Apple had 9% as much CES awareness as Samsung, not because of what they presented at CES (because they never do), but because their products were being compared to products that did launch at CES. For instance, there were several competitive products to Apple¹s automated home center called HomeKit, and numerous smart watch competitors to the upcoming Apple Watch.

Top Topic Areas at CES Driven by Wearables

Moving on to the top CES associations by subject matter, if 2014 was the year Wearables arrived at CES, 2015 was the year that Wearables arrived front and center. There was more awareness around Wearables than any other topic at CES this year. In fact, there was 54% more awareness around Wearables than around any other product area, with related subjects also dominating the list. There was 33% as much CES-related awareness around Smart Watches as around Wearables, 28% as much around Internet of Things, 27% as much around Self-Driving Cars, and 22% as much around Drones as around Wearables.

Apart from areas that are directly related to the "Internet of Things," there was 65% as much CES-related awareness around Smartphones as there was around Wearables, with the Asus Zonefone 2 and LG G Flex 2 leading the charge. There was only 27% as much CES awareness around Tablets as there was around Wearables, with 24% as much around Cameras at the event.

On the TV front, there was 48% as much CES-related awareness around 4K and 44% as much related awareness around Curved TVs as around Wearables, indicating that 4K may be the next must-have product in that industry.

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About Amobee: The above data was compiled by Amobee Intelligence (formerly Kontera), a company that helps brands understand the world’s content and customers’ interests. Its Intelligence platform analyzes the content being read and consumed on the Web, on social platforms, and on mobile devices. This historical and real-time information is used to provide marketers with trends and actionable insights for marketing strategies. Each day, the company cross-correlates the consumption patterns of more than 2 billion content items as they are seen and read by consumers across the web, mobile, and social digital ecosystem.

Core Technology & Platform: Amobee’s Marketing Intelligence focuses on surfacing both real-time and historical interest trends and patterns based on what content people actually “see” and consume across the entire digital ecosystem. Its Brand Intelligence technology is based on several proprietary semantic, statistical, and linguistic algorithms that analyze and correlate consumption of social, web, and mobile content. This real-time platform examines on a daily basis what consumers see and their content consumption patterns as they view and consume across more than 400,000 websites, 550 terabytes of video, 1.4 billion tweets, 450 million articles, 550 million images, and more than 300 billion phrases, to quickly aggregate actionable insights on more than 27,000 interest topics, 8,000 celebrities, 12,000 locations, and 350,000 products.

July 11, 2012

I really like this infographic from the Rackspace blog. Very helpful for people to understand APIs. It also cites some great data from my frends at ProgrammableWeb.

Quoting from the post:

You probably use application programming interfaces (APIs) multiple times a day and aren’t even aware of it. They make it easier to share photos with friends, access massive data stores and drive new app development. With the rise of APIs, including our own Open Cloud API, we’ve compiled an overview to help you understand how APIs work, how you’re already using them, and how businesses are finding big successes with APIs.

April 18, 2012

The DEMO 2012 conference kicks off this morning in Santa Clara, California. If you're a regular reader, you know I've covered this event more than a dozen times -- in fact, every single twice-annual DEMO conference in the U.S. since the spring of 2006! But I couldn't be there this time. (At each of the last two DEMO events, a Minnesota startup pitched... but, sadly, none this time.)

However, I still wanted to blog the list of presenting companies, which are all named below and each one linked to a profile page. There are some 80 companies this time. For more than 22 years, DEMO has built an unmatched track record of selecting, coaching, promoting, and making successful some of the most game-changing products the world has ever seen.

This year, there appears to be no live video stream. But you can follow along at VentureBeat, which co-produces the event, as its writers post over the next two days. Here's their kickoff post with more info.

UPDATE: Turns out there is a live stream! ... and it's here. VentureBeat says it will update this page throughout Wednesday and Thursday "with the most exciting companies at DEMO." Obviously, you'll only see live video during the actual hours of the general session, but several text posts about specific presenting companies will also continue to appear here.

DEMO Spring 2012 Presenting Companies

Clicking on each link below takes you to a profile page containing details about the company, its market segment, competitors, and what DEMO felt was unique about the product being launched. As DEMO says, "View the profile information, access company contact information, review the latest press, add your comments on the company's prospects and watch the company's six-minute launch on the DEMO stage." (A video of each company's on-stage pitch is posted on the DEMO.com site within hours after each conference session is completed.)

February 18, 2012

I read recently an analyst's prediction that social commerce -- of which Facebook commerce is a subset -- would be a $5 billion business by 2015. Does that sound big to you? It didn't to me -- not considering that Forrester says online retail overall will be $279 billion by 2015.

While I was mulling these numbers, I happened to delve into the blog of Sucharita Mulpuru, a VP at Forrester and a well known ebusiness analyst. I discovered she's been a longtime bear on F-commerce. Then I saw a sharply worded story pop up yesterday morning, first in a Shop.org newsletter I receive. It was based on a Bloomberg story: "Retailers Shut Facebook Storefronts Amid Apathy." What one might call the money quote the reporter ended her story with: '

"I give so-called F-commerce an 'F' "

It was a quote attributed to Wade Gerten, CEO of 8thBridge, a Minneapolis-based social-commerce technology firm.

The story ended abruptly with that quote -- leaving me hungering for more. But I didn't have to wait long, because last night a quick-comeback rebuttal to the story suddenly appeared on Forbes.com. It was a guest post from that very same Wade Gerten, entitled "Facebook Shopping Apathy? Smart Plays On F-Commerce." His company, 8thBridge, was a much-heralded startup here in 2009 that hitched its wagon to Facebook commerce, and soon after raised $15 million in two rounds of venture capital. Turns out he and his team had a wild day, he told me, pulling together that post to counter the Bloomberg piece. A key excerpt from the post is the conclusion:

"Tomorrow’s online shopping experience will look very different than the product catalog-specific experience we have today. The rich intent data available via the Open Graph will enable brands to usher in a new era of ecommerce that is shaped by people and around people.

This is the most exciting innovation to hit e-commerce since its birth in the Nineties! Most of the brands working in this space are anything but apathetic."

On its web site, 8thBridge claims that more than 50 leading brands in fashion, retail, and entertainment have launched social commerce initiatives with its technology -- some of those other brands being Delta Air Lines, Oscar de la Renta, Electronic Arts, and Avon. The site doesn't say how many of these "initiatives" may have been of the "storefront" variety that the Bloomberg story says are being closed -- nor, of course, does it name which of its clients had (or still may have) such storefronts. But I think it's fair to say the Open Graph initiatives are what 8thBridge is now very much concentrating on.

As you might imagine, 8thBridge is not the only company defending F-commerce. Here's another link, also on Bloomberg, which appeared prior to the recent dustup (it's a video interview): "Payvment CEO Sees 'Huge Business' on Facebook." But note this guy is also hedging his bets -- spreading his risk if you will, naming both Twitter and Google+ as other platforms where his firm can make money from its technology.

On top of all this recent uproar about Facebook commerce is the absolute juggernaut that is Pinterest! I've gone on record on the past two weekly Minnov8 Gang podcasts as saying this site will be a huge disruptor in social commerce. But that's the topic of another blog post -- actually, countless hundreds that will no doubt be appearing soon everywhere! (By the way, please follow me here on Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/graemethickins.)

What future do you see for Facebook commerce? Or for social commerce in general? Please comment!

November 10, 2011

It was great to catch my friend Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad and now CTO of Best Buy, this morning at breakfast. It was right before his opening keynote, and he gave me kind of a sneak peak to his talk. We covered a lot of topics, and could have gone on even longer... here's the 10-minute interview:

November 08, 2011

Wow, time flies. Seems like only yesterday we gathered in downtown Denver for the first Defrag conference in the fall of 2007. Now I'm about to experience my fifth, and each has been better than the one before. A couple years ago, the venue was switched to the OMNI Interlocken Resort in nearby Broomfield, where I arrived today about noon.

"It’s about being passionate about the learning process… that turns out to be what is different about Defrag."

Eric pointed out that there are all kinds of conferences about cloud computing, or social business, or enterprise 2.0, or mobile, or whatever. At these, "you’ll hear about benefits and case studies and tactics and feature sets. If that’s what you need for some project, great. But that’s not what you’ll get at Defrag… We’re really down to wanting to find amazing people that are passionate about something that they’re learning, and then giving them the room to tell everyone about their passion."

So that's it in a nutshell. As Eric says, "amazing ideas, amazing people, amazing conversations — and a ton of passionate obsessions around what people are pursuing. I don’t know how to explain it beyond that. It’s just different. You just won’t find it many other places (PopTech, TED, etc)." Well said, Eric, and it's been my privilege to blog or live-tweet every single Defrag event, and meet many of those amazing people.

It's Tuesday afternoon now, and I'll be starting my live blog of "Defrag 5" soon, as we begin gathering in the hotel lobby (yes, including in the famous Tap Room!). Soon after that, many attendees, myself included, will be going off to offsite dinners put on by certain sponsors. My "Cover It Live" live-blog window (below) will contain all my tweets and those of others' containing the hashtag #defragcon. The volume of tweets in the live-blog will of course greatly increase when the conference itself fires up in the morning. (Here's the entire agenda.) In addition, I'll be doing other live-blog updates that will appear within the Cover It Live window, interspersed with the entire #defragcon Twitter stream.

Allowing the entire tweet stream of the event to appear in the live-blog makes it much more interesting, I think. And, once the event closes, the whole "conversation" will then be flipped around and archived in proper chronological order, which is pretty cool for anyone who may want to refer back. There are always so many great Twitter exchanges going on during Defrag.

The link for this blog post will remain permanent for the live-blog archive. That's the big advantage for me to document a conference with this live-blogging tool, compared to just tweeting the event. (Have you tried going back to get an archive of your tweetstream for a certain day or event? Good luck.) Plus the fact that I can do posts longer than 140 characters. If you like it, let me know!

October 30, 2011

You've likely heard of the "SXSW Accelerator," which has been a feature for several years at the huge, annual South By Southwest festival, held every March in Austin, Texas. Well, here's something new for 2012: SXSW has announced the creation of a home base for startups, VCs/investors, media, and other entrepreneurial-minded attendees to gather, mix, and mingle during the Interactive portion of the event. It's called SXSW Startup Village.

The 19th annual SXSW Interactive Festival takes place March 9-13, 2012. Startup Village will include the Accelerator program, targeted panels, meetups, lounges, and mentoring/coaching sessions, and will primarily be located on the fourth floor of the Austin Downtown Hilton, making it easy for the startup crowd to find the programming and networking opportunities most important to them.

Want to hang out with startups of the quality of Siri (which won the Accelerator's web category in 2010, then was acquired by Apple) and Hipmunk (the 2011 winner)? Then this is the place for you! I'm sure planning to attend.

I spoke recently via Skype with Chris Valentine (photo), coordinator of the SXSW Startup Village, and asked him some questions. How big is SXSW Interactive? He told me about 10,000 people attended the last one. And he noted it has an "international scope." How many startups applied to last year's SXSW Accelerator? About 400 in various categories, and that was narrowed down to 40 who were invited to present at the event. Who were the winners last year? Here's a link announcing the seven winners in 2011, which includes two that were music-related (there's also an Accelerator program for the music portion of the festival, which follows the interactive event). For the 2012 Accelerator, Valentine said 56 companies will get to present, due the the fact that new categories have been added, including Mobile and Health.

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[Timeout for a Minnesota Connection: At last year's SXSW Accelerator, Minnesota gaming startup OONQR was a finalist in the Entertainment category. Cofounder and CEO Justin Peck told me that his company's SXSW experience "exceeded our expectations." He was impressed that the Accelerator program "made room for a tiny midwestern startup in their lineup of successful, well-established companies." He said their trip to Austin wouldn't have been possible without the two free tickets they got to SXSW as a result of being accepted to present at the Accelerator. "I'm glad to see they're expanding it. Startup Village sounds like promising addition to the program."]

UPDATE: Chris of course remembered the QONQR guys and spoke highly of their startup. Then I brought up how many Minnesotans have been attending SXSW Interactive for years -- hundreds went last year. Many gang up in cars and drive down, and some even rent houses to save on accommodation expenses!Chris seemed surprised when I told him we have one of the largest interactive marketing communities in the entire country. The Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) has more than 1300 members and holds the largest annual event of its kind, right here in MInneapolis: the "MIMA Summit." It attracts more than 1000 attendees every fall. My coverage of the recent event, with my colleagues at Minnov8.com, is here, here, and here.

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The SXSW people define the purpose of the new Startup Village as "uniting the startup, entrepreneur, and investor communities under one roof for focused programming and networking opportunities during SXSW Interactive."

Valentine explained: “Over the last few years, startups and the entrepreneurs who nurture them have become a vital part of the SXSW Interactive festival." He said SXSW wants these attendees to learn, network, and share their experiences, and to foster an environment of innovation and collaboration. "We’re magnifying that atmosphere by converging startup-specific programming, events, and the SXSW Accelerator program in one dedicated location.”

Startup Village panel programming will consist of discussions and workshops specifically designed to educate budding and current entrepreneurs on best practices and lessons learned. Startup Village will also feature mentoring/coaching sessions, lounge areas, and designated meetups for attendees to network with some of today’s up-and-coming startups, seasoned entrepreneurs, and investors.

The 2012 SXSW Accelerator competition kicks off its two-day Interactive showcase on Monday, March 12, while the SXSW Music Accelerator, which spotlights the latest in music technologies, takes place on Wednesday, March 14. For companies wishing to participate in the Accelerator program, applications are being accepted through November 18. To apply for the Interactive Accelerator, visit http://sxsw.com/interactive/accelerator/enter, and to apply for the Music Accelerator, visit http://sxsw.com/music/accelerator/enter.

Startup Village programming will be open to SXSW Interactive, Gold, and Platinum registrants. SXSW music registrants will be admitted to Startup Village programming and events on Tuesday, March 13, 2012. For more information, visit www.sxsw.com/interactive.

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Hi! In addition to managing this blog, I'm the founder of a firm that provides "branding and marketing solutions to win in the Knowledge Economy." Over 25+ years, I've built significant value for a wide variety of technology clients. I'm variously described as a Content Marketing Consultant .. a Darn Good, Well-Connected Tech Startup Advisor .. and a Really Nice Guy.
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